CONCACAF Olympic Qualifying Tournament Moved to Costa Rica

NewsSep 25, 2003

NEW YORK (Sept. 25, 2003) -- CONCACAF announced today that the 2004 CONCACAF Women’s Olympic Qualification Final Round will be relocated to Costa Rica and will be played from February 25 through March 7, 2004. The final round of the tournament was originally slated to be played in Mexico.

"We are very pleased that Costa Rica will have the opportunity to host this important competition,” said CONCACAF General Secretary Chuck Blazer. “Women's Football in Costa Rica has always enjoyed strong support and has been one of the major footholds of the sport in our region. Bringing this tournament there both solves the logistical issues of running both the men's and women's tournament at the same time while having a great new venue for this competition.”

The United States has received a bye through the CONCACAF Olympic preliminaries and will play in Group B. The change in venue for the final round now gives Costa Rica a bye through preliminaries and a spot in Group A alongside Canada.

Mexico will now house a preliminary three-team competition with Honduras and Nicaragua from December 10-14, 2003. Costa Rica was originally scheduled to host that round-robin competition.

The qualifying preliminaries include two other three-team competitions. Guatemala hosts Panama and Belize from November 19-23, 2003, and the Cayman Islands host Jamaica and U.S. Virgin Islands from December 3-7, 2003.

Rounding out preliminary action, Haiti faces the Dominican Republic in a two-game series October 26 and November 9, and Suriname takes on Trinidad & Tobago in a two-games series on November 9 and 12.

The five qualifiers from those preliminaries will join Canada, Costa Rica and U.S. in the CONCACAF Women’s Olympic Final Round with two berths to the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, Greece at stake.

The CONCACAF Men’s Olympic Qualifying Finals will remain in Mexico from February as it is slated for 2-12 February 2004. Complete Olympic qualifying brackets are available online at www.concacaf.com.